Maybe no oncologist you know, but you see I was in the room when her doctor told her that the tests had all come back clean and she was free of the cancer and should expect to live out her normal allotment of years(pretty much the same words Fred used today in the Cavuto interview). Needless to say we were ecstatic. She left the office consumed with tears of joy. 9 month later the same doctors told her the cancer had spread throughout her body. Again she left the office in tears, but of a totally different type. 4 month later I was burying her, so please don't be so condescending with your comment on my imagination.
As for my friend he was told that his disease was in remission and that he had a 75% chance of living a full life. He was dead in 6 month.
You are right there is no cure for cancer. As a college biology student I worked as a research assistance on some cancer studies so I am not some uninformed bumpkin. I have lost a grandmother, father, wife(her grandfather and an aunt) and a friend to cancer, I know there is no cure and that is what concerns me about Fred, Rudy and John. I hope Fred does not have the same type of NHL that my wife had, and that he and the others live to be 90, but don’t insult my intelligence by insinuating I imagined what my wife and I went through.
I am very sorry for your losses.
You understand there are alot of con artists in the blogosphere that are attempting everyday to smear Fred Thompson and his family. Politics is an ugly business that way.
Yesterday’s news about Fred Thompson’s cancer was not a concern to me because I work in cancer research and am fairly current on developments.
I think I explained to you fairly well in simple terms why women with breast cancer go on to get other cancers. I am not sure when all this occurred in your life but I know that in today’s oncological clinical setting a woman who is treated for breast cancer would never be told what your wife was told. Only after years of followup with no sign of cancer would she be told that it appears she is free of the cancer and then given a prognosis of a normal lifespan.
From what you say cancer runs in your family and that is a risk factor in itself. Again I am sorry to hear that you have so much family loss and I pray that the advances that continue to be made will help stem any possible future loss your family is at risk for.
Fred Thompson was honest in his interview in saying ‘cure’ was never a word to be used in cancer just as it is not a word to be used in diabetes (although diabetes has a chance through stem cell research of finding a cure).
Again your wife’s case cannot be compared to Fred Thompson’s because she had a treatment for a different cancer that left her prone to developing new cancers.
You friend’s cancer appears to have been caught too late.
The best I can tell you is from the thousands of case data I have seen, NHL patients that have the right genotype and who receive early treatment have a very good prognosis, so much so that they are very likely to die of other causes not related to NHL.
Early detection and treatment of treatable NHL has a prognosis of normal lifespan.
Stage three or later detection and treatment of treatable NHL has a prognosis of 5-10 years.
Early detection and treatment of non-treatable NHL has a prognosis of 2-7 years.
Late detection and treatment of non-treatable NHL has a prognosis of 0-2 years.